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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

A Pop Music Emergency: From Pallor to Applause

By
Laurence Ross and Meghan Vicks

The voice is one akin to the automated airline intercom telling you to secure
the mask to your face and breathe normally in order to begin the flow of
oxygen. “Thank you for your cooperation during this pop music emergency,” she posts.

This
voice is admittedly calmer than the one a mere
seven hours before: “A POP MUSIC EMERGENCY IS UNDERWAY 911,” and “911
SUMMON THE MONSTER TROUPES.” Or her post on
Saturday: “Wanna grab some shovels and fuck up some hackers?”

Applause: (from the Latin applaudere, to strike upon,
clap), primarily the expression of approval by clapping of hands; generally any
expression of approval.

What exactly is a state of emergency, let alone a “pop music emergency”?

A state of emergency is a period when the exception to the rule takes over –
thestate
of exception. Normal order is suspended, and what is usually outlawed
takes control precisely in order to save the system that is under attack or
corrupted, that is under unbearable tension or friction. It turns out (as it
often does) that the system is dependent upon that which it normally excludes,
outlaws, taboos.

Lady Gaga announces a state of emergency on 12 August 2013, and there emerges
“Applause,” accompanied by the
jester Gaga-Pierrot. “Applause” and Gaga-Pierrot are thus positioned as the
exception to the rule that has come to rule, as the exclusion-from-the-system
that is necessary to restore the system, as the outlaw that has come to save us
from a corrupted rule.

The questions arise: what is this system that we need saving from? What has
caused this state of emergency?

The custom of applauding is doubtless as old and as
widespread as humanity, and the variety of its forms is limited only by the
capacity for devising means of making a noise. Among civilized nations,
however, it has at various times been subject to certain conventions.

Of course, this is a “pop music emergency.” Applause aside, pop music does seem
to be in a state of emergency at the moment. There seems to be a crisis mounting
that, however overblown it might seem to those on the outskirts of the
skirmish, is bleeding across territories (take Jay-Z at the PACE gallery for
example). Gaga emerges from the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles looking like the
victim of a mugging in her Pierrot make-up and, indeed, harassment has
occurred.

Pop
music seems an easy target for criticism, if criticism’s aim is to take aim, to
fire upon, to maim or kill. Because the nature of pop culture is to be of
the moment, there seems to be the assumption that the products of pop
culture are disposable, are garbage, are waste. Perhaps people believe pop
music can’t be “good” music because the assumption is that the artist isn’t
really an artist, that the artist does not really exist, that there is no such
thing as a pop music artist – the songs, the albums, the images, the
music videos are the products of teams, of managers, of producers, of
marketers. And a product intended for (mass) consumption. Perhaps people
believe this type of product is necessarily “bad,” is rotten before it even
hits the shelves.

In
truth, the conversations of what is “good” and what is “bad” are tiring. Gaga
seems weary of such criticisms and conversations well, with the makeup of
“Applause” hacked and leaked across the Internet, her make-up in smears amidst
her sheets. ‪#‎StopTheDramaStartTheMusic
And if the critic is trying to play the judge, to moderate what is worth
listening to and what is not, to parse out what deserves our attention and what
does not, then the critic’s gavel is one made out of crystal – an object precious
to some, pretty to others, and petty to others still, but an object that
shatters regardless if used to bash. Is the critic’s role to silence some and
let others speak? We hope not. We are far more interested in seeing what
reflects in/on the work than naming the work as “good” or “bad”; we are far
more interested in seeing how the various surfaces of pop culture lean against
one another, intersect; we are far more interested in the pattern of light pop
music – or any other cultural spectacle – makes on the wall when we hold the
gavel just so.

Thus the Romans had a set ritual of applause for public performances,
expressing degrees of approval: snapping the finger and thumb, clapping with
the flat or hollow palm, waving the flap of the toga.

So
into this pop music emergency “Applause” emerges, hand in hand with the jester
Gaga-Pierrot – the latest incarnation of Gaga’s trickster,
which is abundantly fitting as tricksters, by their very nature, are exclusions
from systems, exceptions to the rules, border breakers, outcasts, outlaws,
out-of-bounds, outside. Gaga-Pierrot and “Applause” are the antidote to the
poison that has made a culture of dull, unimaginative, and elitist naysayers,
whose knee-jerk reaction to any manifestation of pop culture (especially pop
music, celebrity, and reality-TV culture) is to sneer and snub, to tear down,
to urgently and stridently shriek THAT’S NOT ART, to proclaim creative risks as
“fame whoring,” to constantly publish articles
that literally say no more than here’s another celebrity failing at art,
to hissLady Gaga is a joke! In their scorn, they don’t realize how right they
are.

Gaga
turns the joke, the joker, the jester Pierrot whose new theme song is
“Applause,” into that which will rescue us from this pop music emergency. After
all, a joke is intended to break a strain, a tension; Schiller defines comedy
as something that inspires “freedom of the soul”; and Kant insists on the
therapeutic nature of laughter – the “sudden emotion arising from the sudden
transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.” And, perhaps, in the
face of strained expectation, in the face of “what will she do next,” in the face
of the “Lady No More Gaga” headlines she has predicted since “Paparazzi,” Gaga
paints her face white, simultaneously the
visible absence of color and the base of all color, so that sudden emotions
of color may arise. The figure of the jester Pierrot allows Gaga to say, You dismissed me as a joke again and
again; now I’ve come to save you precisely as the joke you dismissed.

When Christianity became fashionable the customs of the
theatre were transferred to the churches.

Gaga-Pierrot
doesn’t rescue with reasoned argument (she’s not interested in the critic’s
“right or wrong” – this kind of question has become banal and meaningless), but
with song and bodied performance. The lyrics of “Applause” make bodily demands
of its listeners – as
Roland points out, the lyrics guide listeners through movements (“put your
hands up, make em touch,” “make it real loud”) that ultimately generate a
ritual coming together of community. The song takes on flesh as the audience
applauds – indeed the song is left hanging, incomplete without the audience’s
applause just as Gaga-Pierrot lives and loves for the applause, and means
nothing without it. But it’s not just the song “Applause” and the jester
Gaga-Pierrot that come to life in this ritual: we, the spectators, the citizens
of pop culture, are born this way too. This audience participation has been
part of her act from the very beginning, when we are not so much asked but told
to just dance. Gaga and audience are continually in a give-and-give
relationship: we sing to one another:
“I’m your biggest fan, I’ll follow you until you love me.”

One
of the main rules that Gaga-Pierrot breaks to bring us together is the notion
that coming together requires a physical proximity. Instead, she builds
community upon 0s and 1s, across the Internet’s constellations, via digital
profiles and online presences. “Send us your videos of you and your friends
dancing at school [...] AT HOME IS OK TOO [...] WORK IS ALSO FINE,” she commands, and
later:
“Let me see your #APPLAUSECoverSelfie !” And the citizens respond, in droves:

Now
the image of Gaga-Pierrot has gone viral in a worldwide digital drag
performance. Now “Applause” has taken flesh and form and movement infinitely
across the world. We’re reminded of something Devin O’Neill wrote
after first seeing Gaga’s commercial
for Google Chrome: “You can call it crass commercialism, but I can wander
around my neighborhood and go days without experiencing the kind of humanity
she communicated through that television commercial.” There is real humanity
emerging via the workings of Gaga-Pierrot and “Applause.” And the community of
monsters has shifted into a community of clowns, jesters, jokers, tricksters.

Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. vii. 30) says that Paul of Samosata
encouraged the congregation to applaud his preaching by waving linen cloths,
and in the 4th and 5th centuries applause of the rhetoric of popular preachers
had become an established custom.

When
the white flag is waved, the emergency has ended, or at the very least is
ebbing. The idea of the white flag is the idea that it is time to resolve, to
reconcile, to construct something new out of the opposing sides. There is
something about the coming together, the joining of hands and the clapping of
hands that is sacramental, a communal act, a spiritual communion. Synchronized
movement is sacrament.

Here, Gaga’s embodiment of the jester Pierrot partakes in the mythology of the
fool in its various manifestations: not only the sad clown Pierrot, but also
the holy fools of the Russian tradition (юродивый, yurodiviy), and the wise
fools of Shakespeare. Pierrot
is often the fool who is always the butt of everyone’s jokes, but who
nevertheless remains trusting of others. Likewise, the Russian holy
fool creates a spectacle of degradation and debasement that invites the
criticism of others, which allows him to draw attention to the world’s own
debasement and pray for those who abuse him. Shakespeare’s fools are
objectified sources of laughter, so far outside the cultural (and critical)
norms as to be shrugged off as innocuous (if incessantly speaking) dolts. And
it is precisely the role of the fool, of being viewed as a less-than species to
ignore, that allows them to get away with murder/a murderous truth, to speak
with the most meaning. However, in order to comprehend these truths, these
realities, the audience must be able to trust in the fool, to be open and
available to hear the words that are so plainly spoken. In all three
manifestations of the fool, these figures are not destroyed by criticism;
rather, they turn criticism into something beautiful: faith in humanity despite
its endless taunting (Pierrot), salvation (holy fool), and enlightenment
(Shakespeare’s fools). Gaga as the fool gives us all three and waits/lives for
our return action – to keep the relationship going, echoing back and forth. She
sings so that we may sing so that she may sing; we applaud so that she may
applaud so that we may applaud.

I live for the Applause, plause.

I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong.

Author
bios:

Laurence
Ross holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama. He
formerly served as the Creative Nonfiction Editor for the Black Warrior
Review and now lives in New Orleans where he writes for Pelican Bomb,
a regional publication dedicated to the Louisiana arts community. He is
currently at work on a book-length project concerning the lives and deaths of
our cultural spectacles/specters.

1 comment:

I really like the embodiment angle. You could say that participation is normally forbidden or prohibited from the experience of modern pop: the commercial-industrial complex is so huge and distance and impersonal that one's experience of it lies only in consumption - and the sublimated or fetishized version of consumption is criticism (particularly judging as opposed to experiencing criticism). Criticism is also, not coincidentally, a form of consumption in which an elite mediates our experience of pop music for us.

In this (Marxist) way, the emergency of too much criticism is the immense paralyzing gulf between theory and action. Criticism doesn't encourage or collapse into participation anymore, if it ever did, but makes participation impossible by occupying the space intended once reserved for it.

So Gaga's solution is to bring participation back; "Applause" is *literally* a call to action.

Established in March 2010 as the first mover in Gaga studies,Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga is a technological journal that critically-creatively participates in the cultural project of shock pop phenomenon Lady Gaga. Keeping with the spirit of our zeitgeist, Gaga Stigmata moves at the speed of pop.

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Editors

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer, artist, and founding editor of Gaga Stigmata. She is the author of the books The Ravenous Audience, E! Entertainment, Kim's Fairytale Wedding, and, with Amaranth Borsuk, ABRA.Visit her website.

Meghan Vicks holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

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